


cause you trouble

by irnan



Series: mischiefmanaged!verse [20]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, mischiefmanaged!verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-03
Updated: 2012-05-10
Packaged: 2017-11-04 18:29:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/396887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So Mum explains about the Australian thing, and Rosie doesn't really take it well. I... sort of don't know <i>what</i> to think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> companion piece to "follow death and all his friends", continuing the saga of Rose and Hugo Weasley's Complicated Grandparental Relationships.

"So then," said Rosie sulkily, "why weren't you arrested?"

"Because she was at least half of the saving of the wizarding world," said Dad.

"One third at most," said Mum. "Rosie, look."

"I don't want to," Rosie snapped. "Oh, why do you have to go and make everything so _complicated_?"

Mum shook her head. "Because it _is_ complicated," she said. "They wanted me out of the war - yes. That was wrong of them - yes, or at least I believe that, and I'll go to my grave believing that. And yes: if I hadn't known they wanted me out of the war I would have asked before I modified their memories. That doesn't change the fact that I did something wrong, something really terrible, actually."

"It's all talk," said Rosie. "It's not even that, not even about the memories, it's like - like they don't even want you to be a witch, like they don't want me to be a witch."

Mum and Dad looked at each other. Dad was perched on the edge of the coffee table, all sort of folded-up and kind of looming the way Dad looks when he's too tall for places. Mum was in the armchair, pulled around so it was opposite Rosie and me on the sofa. She was wearing her work clothes, which are basically armour.

"They don't," said Mum baldly. "At least, not anymore. Or maybe they don't mind, but they don't think it's worth it... it's not magic that bothers them. Not like the - not like some others. It's everything that comes with it."

I didn't know what it was about this that was making Rosie so angry, but she was furious. Mum's a person and she's made mistakes. Stop the press, make it a national holiday.

"It's like telling your kid you don't mind that they're gay as long as they don't sleep with anyone of the same sex," Rosie shot back. "It's - it's hypcritical. And it's rubbish. They think you're warping us, and it's not true, it's the other way round. They don't understand a word of it, all the people who died, Uncle Fred -"

" _Stop_ ," said Dad very sharply. "Don't you drag Fred into this. For one thing, he's my brother, not yours. And he's got nothing to do with your Mum or your grandparents. You're not allowed to use him as an excuse to hate them."

Rosie's jaw set. I thought she was being stupid, which was... well, stupid, because she was the Ravenclaw, she was supposed to be the clever one.

"So?" I said, and everyone's heads swivelled to look at me. I hadn't said anything since Mum had finished explaining about New Zealand. No, Australia. I didn't care, I didn't really want to remember. "What do we do?"

Mum twisted her hands in her lap. "It's up to you, Hugo. It's up to both of you, if you want to keep seeing them - I know they want to see you."

"What, so they can keep talking about how much better our lives would be if we were anyone but who we are?" demanded Rosie furiously.

"That's one vote contra," said Dad calmly, but I thought it was costing him a bit of an effort. I ignored them both and carried on talking to Mum.

"I don't know. I just - I mean. And they _are_ weird about school and stuff."

"I know," Mum said gently. Dad and Rosie were glaring at each other over our heads.

"I don't want to hang around people who think I'm brainwashed because I can levitate things and I can brew potions, or whatever."

"I know."

"But they're my grandparents."

"Yes, they are."

" _You_ put up with it."

"They're my Mum and Dad," said Mum wearily. "I wouldn't have done what I did to them in the first place if I hadn't cared about them." She looked awfully tired all of a sudden, and weirdly old, and it was a bit frightening - she loved them like we loved her and Dad; imagine us ever doing something that wouldn't change _that_ , but would wreck everything else.

I stood up. "I - I'll think about it - I have to -"

They let me go. Thinking about it, they probably knew where I was headed.

  
  
  
Uncle Harry was lying on the sofa reading a book when I came through the Floo, and he didn't look up. "Abandon hope all ye who enter here," he said as I dusted myself off. "Teddy, if I find out you had a thing to do with that business with the paint buckets... oh, sorry, Hugo. Teddy said he'd be over and he's got red hair this week."

I laughed, and sat down on the coffee table like Dad was sitting back home. Uncle Harry watched me for a minute. I tried to say something - really I did. It just wouldn't come out. I don't know why. It was awful, I couldn't tell where to start at all. That's not like me. Dad says I forward plan like Mum, he says Rosie starts stuff but can't always finish and that I always know where I'm headed. Well, I didn't know then. I'd just come away to get away, and to talk to someone who wasn't the least bit involved, and now I didn't know what to say.

Uncle Harry sat up and swung his legs off the sofa so he was sitting oppsite me.

"Can I guess?" he asked gently. Uncle Harry and Aunt Luna are the two best people in the world to _talk_ -talk to, and Uncle Harry only wins because he's a bloke.

(Lily's always said that's rubbish and that Mum's much easier, but Lily can be as mad as a hatter. It is known.)

"Your Mum told you about the Australian thing, and it didn't go too well."

You just had to roll your eyes at them sometimes. "D'they tell you _everything_?"

"About as much as I tell them."

Hmmph.

"Yeah, so. And Rosie's furious. And I don't know why. I mean, I do. It just doesn't make me angry. I'm all mixed up and confused, but I'm not angry."

Uncle Harry smiled. "If it's my godfatherly opinion you're asking," he said, "then Rosie's just as confused, and she doesn't like it. That's what makes her angry. Alternately, she's having trouble with the notion that loving people isn't necessarily easy. I don't know what I'd have done in Hermione's place." He looked a bit distant, and a bit sad.

"Uncle James and Aunt Lily were a witch and wizard," I said. "They didn't think Hogwarts was brainwashing you."

I didn't know why I called them that. Teddy did. It was just a sort of habit that me and Rosie had started to get into. Suddenly I remembered being snarky about Lily only having one set of grandparents in the car on our last visit to Granma and Grandad Granger, and went red.

But Uncle Harry laughed. "Hogwarts brainwashes everyone," he said. "In different ways."

"Good ways?"

"Well, I think so. It's your Granma and Grandad's perfect right to think differently."

I squirmed. "I don't know what I'd even say to them. I'm sorry you don't like it that I'm not a Squib?"

Uncle Harry shrugged. "It's not really about the magic," he said. "It's about the world, our world, about what we teach you to believe in."

"I get to choose," I said angrily. "I'm not a sheep."

"Nobody is," said Uncle Harry. "The point is that - that not everybody wants to choose. Or sometimes maybe someone thinks they're not allowed to for whatever reason, or that they just can't. I think Hermione's Mum and Dad believe that she thought she couldn't choose. They're good people, and it would be a shame if you never saw them again, Hugo, it would. But... they were really angry with her for a long time. And that sort of stopped them from understanding very well? And now in a way it's too late. Sometimes you have to understand something at once, or maybe you never will."

"D'you think?"

It's a sort of frightening thought.

"Sometimes, yes - especially when it's about people you love. Your ideas get fixed, and you hurt each other, and it just makes everything worse and worse, and you can't take any of it back."

He looked as old as Mum had earlier, and far sadder.

"But, Hugo. That's between your Mum and her parents. It's not - I want you to remember this - it's not ever between you and your grandparents. Or Rosie and your grandparents. You get to start again, on your own terms."

"I don't know," I said baldly, feeling confused and stupid and a bit scared, "if I want to."

"You don't have to decide right now," said Uncle Harry gently.

I shook my head and then sort of sunk it in my hands. It felt full and wobbly and stupid, and the light was right behind Uncle Harry and shining into my eyes, and I didn't want to look at it. It was all painful and grey, sunlight coming through thin misty clouds. Back home in the Cotswolds it had been raining like anything.  
Uncle Harry sat down on the coffee table next to me and put his arm around me. "I'm sorry," he said softly.

I sniffed - stupid, stupid, I didn't want to cry. "Why? S'not your fault."

He laughed, a really strange laugh, choked and sort of tearing - it was horrible. "Isn't it?"

I had to think about it for a minute before I knew what he meant.

"No," I said. Then, fiercely: "I'd do it for Lily. Or Rosie or Jim or Al. I'm a Gryffindor."

He kissed the top of my head. I was at least six years too old for that. I didn't care. "In this one thing," he said, ruefully, "we lead: stupid, noble ideas."

"I don't understand how you can not understand them," I said - I was sort of talking into his shirt. "How selfish do you have to be to not understand them?"

Suddenly I was as angry as Rosie.

"They're idiots - they're horrible selfish cowards - you'd forgive Lily, wouldn't you? Wouldn't you?"

Uncle Harry was silent for a minute. "I'd like to think I would," he said at last. "I mean, it's never really come up."

"But if it _did_ ," I pressed him.

He groaned. "I don't know. That's like asking what I'd do if she turned out to be a Death Eater."

"If who turned out to be a Death Eater?"

It was Jim.

"Your sister," said Uncle Harry.

Jim snorted. "As if. I'd feed her to the Dread Mrs Packenham before that happend. Whassamatter, Hugo?"

"My grandparents are idiots," I said defiantly.

He grinned. "I'd like to see you say that to Granma Weasley's face."

"The other ones, knucklehead."

"Oh. I thought you had to be clever to be a dentist."

"Maybe you do. But not the _right_ kind of clever."

"You're a judgmental little brat," said Jim easily. I sat up straight and glared at him furiously; he's only three years older than me. He laughed at me, hands in his pockets. "Idiot. It's not your problem, is it? Tell them that. Tell them to sort it out on their own time."

"How would you know -"

"Al says Rosie's eloquence on the subject is a thing of awe and beauty."

Jim and Al tell each other so much it's ridiculous.

"I can't just _ignore_ it."

"I don't see why not. You don't catch me wandering around pretending I'm Dad all over again."

"Or worse, _my_ Dad," said Uncle Harry. "Or worse, my Dad _and_ Sirius."

"It's not the same!"

"It is - either way you wrangle it it's not your business."

Uncle Harry poked me in the side. "Listen to wisdom, Hugo. Jim's right: it's not your argument. If you pretend it is you ruin your relationship with them; if you're OK with that, fine. If not... well, you have to get them to leave it alone, and you have to do the same."

I was starting to feel like a sulky kid.

"I don't _know_ what I want!"

Uncle Harry shrugged. "So take some time and work it out. They're not going anywhere - not yet."

They were both quiet for a second while I thought about this.

"You don't have to see them," said Uncle Harry gently. "Why not just - write a letter?"

This bore thinking about as well. "I wouldn't even have to send it. If it didn't come out right."

"Not if you didn't want."

The idea made me feel a lot better. I leant sideways a bit more and scuffed my feet on Aunt Ginny's rug. Jim was standing at my right with his hands in his pockets; for a moment I thought he was waiting for me, and then I realised he was bursting to say something else entirely. The bit where his jeans were wet to the knee was a dead giveaway. And there was paint on his shirt - blue paint.

Huh.

Finally, even Uncle Harry noticed that Jim had apparently trodden a trail of water across the study floor when he came in. "Uh - Jim?"

Jim grinned, and I knew it was going to be something totally awesome. "Uh - Dad. I actually came back to say that Socks has run off and Al fell in the river trying to follow her across the stepping stones and she won't listen to anyone but Lily but Lily can't go and get her because she's stuck up the oak tree with a paintball gun."

Uncle Harry looked at him. I couldn't help it; I giggled. Rosie and me _never_ get into that sort of trouble on our own.

"Lily's stuck up a where with a what?"

"The oak tree," said Jim patiently. "Over on Elm Road. Behind Mrs Packenham's. She's stuck because the horrible cow's out there right now with six besuited grandkids, poor buggers, and they're taking tea under the tree on the other side of the fence and if Lily moves they'll see her. And Constable Sally says if she gets one more phone call we can all spend a night in the holding cells, and I thought I'd better drop in and ask you if that would be all right."

Uncle Harry was still staring. It was plainly taking him a while to switch gears. Jim did that to all the grown ups. "What would?"

"If we spent a night in the holding cells. Only we never have and whenever they do that in the Muggle films they get attacked by zombies and Al says it's just the sort of versimilly whatsits he needs for his DADA essay."

"Versimilitude," I said importantly.

"Whatever, smartypants," said Jim. "Are you coming or not?"

I jumped up. "Hang on, I'll get Rosie."

"You are all," said Uncle Harry, "completely ridiculous. I'll help rescue Lily but Al has to come back for a change of clothes before you get arrested."

 

  
  
Constable Sally's tea and biscuits are really rather good, but by far the best bit was when Lily shot the Dread Mrs Packenham's oldest besuited grandkid with the paintball gun for calling Jim a horrible useless delinquent who was sure to end up in a high security prison on a life sentence. Uncle Harry was sort of angry though, he said if paintball guns hurt they were banned and that was that and where had she got it from anyway?

Nobody blabbed, but we did get Teddy's friend Raj to take it back and return our Galleons, though he said it was only because of Teddy. I wasn't sure. I think he's a bit afraid of Mum and Dad and Uncle Harry. Most people are.

 

  
Anyway, I've started writing to Granma and Grandad Granger. I mean, not on parchment... in my head. Writing letters in my head. Or one long letter, or whatever. When I'm at school I'll write to them properly, with owl post. Maybe Rosie will write too. Maybe she'll just put her name at the bottom of my letter. I don't know if they'll answer though, because I've never sent them owl post before, I've never really sent them any post before, unless you count thank you letters for Christmas presents and stuff. And we always gave those letters to Mum for the Muggle post.

But I think I'd like it if they did write back.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I think Hugo works better in third person.

"So you're not mad at your Mum, then," says Ron. "That's good."

Hugo shrugs. They're eating fish'n'chips in Eastbourne and the early spring sun is at their backs: the pier is gaudily cheerful and the waves crash below them. "I don't know," he says. "I mean, not like Rosie is."

"Rose likes things to be definite," says Ron, "sort of... clear cut."

"What if Mum hadn't done it?"

"You'd probably only have one set of grandparents," says Ron bluntly.

"But it's awful when we're there and you can sort of tell that we're not who they want us to be."

"I guess it is."

He's being deliberately non-committal. It's almost the end of the Easter holidays, and they haven't seen the Grangers since last summer. Boxing Day, usually spent with the Grangers, was quiet and comfortable and concerned leftovers and books until Harry and Ginny turned up with their three. Strange how it all sort of coincided, everyone working through their family problems at the same time. Or maybe not; it's just as much a question of how old the kids are as anything else. And then that business last week with paintball guns and zombie attacks on police stations, which all the grown ups stayed well out of. Ron can remember what Inferi look like, though his children will never know. But while Rosie's wavering between anger and upset and spending as much time out of the house as she can, Hugo's been awfully quiet about the whole thing. So here they are.

Ron's never been much good at deep and meaningful conversations. But he does reckon he does a fair job of giving the people he loves the help they need from him.

Hugo licks salt and vinegar off his fingers and promptly destroys the effect by reaching for another chip.

"D' _you_ think it was wrong?"

"No," says Ron, not the slightest trace of hesitation. Though that's not all; that's never all. "But... you need to know that... look, I did some stupid things, during the war. And the worst of them was leaving Hermione and Harry. We came first, to each other. It was about doing the right thing and stopping Voldemort and whatnot; yeah. And then we even won, and when you win everyone says you were doing the right thing all along, because it worked, didn't it? But you need to know that... that by some people's standards we were a complete wreck, a total cock-up. There was the three of us, and there was everything else. Ever since I joined the Aurors I've heard whole legions of hammy Mind Healers and people who're trained in that Muggle psycha-lology stuff tell people how unhealthy that is. They've got a word for it - co-dependence. Which isn't us at all, you can check the dictionary definition. It really isn't. But some people did say and do say and will keep on saying that... basically, that we shouldn't have done what we did. Or that we should've done it differently. What I'm trying to say... make up your own mind, Hugo. What's wrong and what isn't. Don't let anybody tell you."

Hugo thinks about this. "Not even you and Mum?"

It's the sort of heartbreaking question that nobody who'd grown up around Harry Potter would ever think to ask, not even when their own parents had been fantastically loving and understanding. Harry's never properly talked about his time with the Dursleys, or at least not to Ron and Hermione, but of course he never really needed to; it was all there, by implication in his words, his concept of the world, his friendships. The notion of Harry ever, _ever_ believing, even just for a minute, a word the Dursleys told him sort of turns Ron's stomach, thirty years later.

Not just Harry, either. Look at Sirius, look at Andromeda, look at Scorpius Malfoy.

"Especially not me and Mum," he says to his son.

Hugo looks up at him, seeming startled. He's got his Mum's eyes - both he and Rosie have their Mum's eyes, and her bushy curls, though the colour of them is a darker shade of Weasley ginger. Freckles and a long nose: and a Gryffindor, daring nerve and chivalry. Ron loves him so much it _hurts_ to look at him.

"Well," he says, and actually looks offended. "Who can you trust, if not your family?"

Ron steals one of his chips. "Yourself," he says. Listen to him, sprawled on a damp Eastbourne pier bench with white paint flaking off it, dispensing the wisdom of ages to his son. Somewhere, Fred is laughing like a maniac, pounding the floor with his fists in glee. The notion makes his little brother smile.

"This is all pretty deep for fighting with my grandparents."

"It generally depends what the fight's about, you know."

Hugo shrugs. "Dad. So. Um. What was the worst fight you ever had with your Mum and Dad? With Granma and Grandad Weasley?"

Ron feels startled. "The worst fight?" He thinks about it. There were a lot of fights; of all his siblings only Charlie has their Dad's easy temper. Everyone else blows up as quick as Mum, try as they might to hide it. Even Bill, if you hit the right buttons. There's blinking lights coming on inthe arcade and the sound of teenagers laughing; a small girl skips past with her fingers laced tight through her laughing mother's. Two friends bicker cheerfully by the opposite railing: _you always do it I want a turn_.

"It wasn't really a fight at all," he says slowly, remembering summer weeks filled with chores and wedding preparations and Mum's angry, half-defeated, half-despairing determination to somehow keep them all apart. "She didn't think - Mum didn't think. That we were going about the war the right way."

"Oh, gorbloodyblimey," shouts Hugo, leaping up. "Is there _no one_ you can _trust_?"

Several other people on the pier jump and turn to stare at him. Ron - in spite of all his promoses to himself on this very issue - bursts out laughing.

"I didn't say she didn't think we should fight."

Hugo crumples fish'n'chip paper in his hand and throws it at the nearest rubbish bin. Ron likes to think of it as _Ginny Weasley's Aim_ , though he'd never tell her so.  
"You are _making my brain hurt_ ," he says, clenching his fists at his sides. "I'm starting to understand why Rosie's so mad. You're all being _nutters_ about it, absolute _nutters_."

Only in moments of high dudgeon does Hermione's son resort to his father's vocabulary.

"Well, like your Mum said the other day, it's complicated."

Hugo sits down again with a thump; he scrapes his trainers across the worn wooden planks and crosses his arms over his chest - defiant, and incredibly young. The things Ron had seen by the time he was that age, and which Hugo has been spared... and all it would have taken to avoid them himself was not to sit in that compartment on the train with the scrawny kid in the too-big clothes that Fred told him was Harry Potter. He's endlessly glad he did.

"Uncle Harry says maybe they won't _ever_ understand."

Ron rolls his eyes. Harry's complexes again. "Harry's sort of all-or-nothing about family stuff. Sometimes he forgets that you don't have to sort it all out immediately. It can take a couple years if it needs to."

Hugo looks up. "Can it?"

"Course," says Ron. "Look at Percy. There's no time bomb, Hugo. You don't have a deadline or anything."

(We made sure of that. Everything we had, everything we were, made sure of that.)

Hugo shrugs. "I guess."

Ron gets the urge to laugh again. He stamps it down and twists his wedding-ring around his finger and grins, easily, in the general direction of the girl on the opposite bench. Hugo's OK. He feels like he'd grin at Death Eaters just now.

"Dad," says Hugo.

"Uh-huh."

He's twisted again to look up at Ron, who rests one ankle on his other knee and twists as well, to look down at his son.

"What did you mean about leaving Mum and Uncle Harry?"

Oh, _bollocks_.


End file.
